Tiny Core Base > Alpha Releases

Tiny Core 5.0 Alpha 1 Testing

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Juanito:
Team Tiny Core is pleased to announce Tiny Core 5.0 Alpha1 is available for public testing:

http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/5.x/x86/release_candidates/

This is an alpha level cut. If you decide to help test, then please test carefully. We don't want anyone to lose data.

Since this is an alpha cut, although the team has worked through several preview cuts, we ask that only experienced users test. This cut is not for general use. The features in any alpha are not fixed and may change before a public release candidate is available.

At the moment, only a few extensions have been copied over from the 4.x repo - there's no reason why most of them shouldn't work and we can copy them over to the 5.x repo as they are proven to work.

An updated Xorg series of extensions is in the pipeline, but there's no firm release date as yet.

We appreciate testing and feedback.

If you use distribution files note that you need a new vmlinuz and core.gz

Changelog for 5.0 alpha1:
* kernel update to 3.8.10 with (u)efi boot enabled
* option to use vmlinuz + rootfs.gz + modules.gz or vmlinuz64 + rootfs.gz + modules64.gz (where boot loader permits)
* aterm, freetype, imlib2, jpeg and libpng factored out of Xlibs/Xprogs
* glibc updated to 2.17 and recompiled against 3.8.x kernel headers
* gcc updated to 4.7.2, recompiled against 3.8.x kernel headers and cloog, gmp, mpc, mpfr and ppl
* e2fsprogs base libs/apps updated to 1.42.7
* util-linux base libs/apps updated to 2.22.2
* scm extensions have been dropped from this release

Special Note:
This is alpha software. This is the first public access. Expect bugs. Not recommended for general use.

caminati:
Great! Glad to hear that, and rushing to test it.

Juanito:
Note that with this version of gcc, extensions can be compiled in the usual way:
--- Code: ---CFLAGS="-march=i486 -mtune=i686 -Os -pipe" CXXFLAGS="-march=i486 -mtune=i686 -Os -pipe -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
--- End code ---

..or it can be done like this:

--- Code: ---CC="gcc -flto -fuse-linker-plugin -march=i486 -mtune=i686 -Os -pipe" CXX="g++ -flto -fuse-linker-plugin -march=i486 -mtune=i686 -Os -pipe -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
--- End code ---
..which often results in significantly smaller executables and dynamic libs, but significantly larger static libs

caminati:
A quick test with userspace tczs (Xvesa+firefox+fluxbox) from 4.x caused no apparent issue.
One trivial issue is wrong own/perms of Xprogs/usr/local/tce.installed directory.

linux-headers-xxxx.tcz would be nice to have (can its build be automated?).

For experimentation more than bugreporting:
I like separation into rootdir/modules very much. I tried to load only rootdir, which boots to shell: however, busybox mount of squashfs, rather than failing, hangs busybox, which is strange.
Even stranger is the fact that insmodding squashfs.ko.gz is no fix to that.

caminati:
Sometimes tce-load -i hangs.
After a quick check, looks like "sudo (busybox) depmod -a" is the cause.
I occasionally observed this behavior in the past; this does not happen with original (module-init-tools) depmod, which is forcibly excluded by tce-load, however.

Manually running sudo busybox depmod -a does not terminate, indeed.
I have tczs from 5.x and 4.x loopmounted, maybe this mingling could cause the trouble. I think this is a more general problem with busybox, however.

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